Technology, Culture, and Ethics

Don Ihde

Where do we look when we’re looking for the ethical implications of technology? A few would say that we look at the technological artifact itself. Many more would counter that the only place to look for matters of ethical concern is to the human subject. Philosopher of technology, Peter-Paul Verbeek, argues that there is another, perhaps more important place for us to look: the point of mediation, the point where the artifact and human subjectivity come together to create effects that cannot be located in either the artifact or the subject taken alone.

Early on in Moralizing Technology: Understanding and Designing the Morality of Things (2011), Verbeek briefly outlines the emergence of the field known as “ethics of technology.” “In its early days,” Verbeek notes, “ethical approaches to technology took the form of critique. Rather than addressing specific ethical problems related to actual technological developments, ethical reflection on technology focused on criticizing the phenomenon of ‘Technology’ itself.” Here we might think of Heidegger, critical theory, or Jacques Ellul. In time, “ethics of technology” emerged “seeking increased understanding of and contact with actual technological practices and developments,” and soon a host of sub-fields appeared: biomedical ethics, ethics of information technology, ethics of nanotechnology, engineering ethics, ethics of design, etc.

This approach remains, accordin to Verbeek, “merely instrumentalist.” “The central focus of ethics,” on this view, “is to make sure that technology does not have detrimental effects in the human realm and that human beings control the technological realm in morally justifiable ways.” It’s not that these considerations are unimportant, quite the contrary, but Verbeek believes that this approach “does not yet go far enough.”

Verbeek explains the problem:

“What remains out of sight in this externalist approach is the fundamental intertwining of these two domains [the human and the technological]. The two simply cannot be separated. Humans are technological beings, just as technologies are social entities. Technologies, after all, play a constitutive role in our daily lives. They help to shape our actions and experiences, they inform our moral decisions, and they affect the quality of our lives. When technologies are used, they inevitably help to shape the context in which they function. They help specific relations between human beings and reality to come about and coshape new practices and ways of living.”

Observing that technologies mediate perception, how we register the world, and action, how we act into the world, Verbeek elaborates a theory of technological mediation, built upon a postphenomenological approach to technology pioneered by Don Ihde. Rather than focus exclusively on either the artifact “out there,” the technological object, or the will “in here,” the human subject, Verbeek invites us to focus ethical attention on the constitution of both the perceived object and the subject’s intention in the act of technological mediation. In other words, how technology shapes perception and action is also of ethical consequence.

As Verbeek rightly insists, “Artifacts are morally charged; they mediate moral decisions, shape moral subjects, and play an important role in moral agency.”

Verbeek turns to the work of Ihde for some analytic tools and categories. Among the many ways humans might relate to technology, Ihde notes two relations of “mediation.” The first of these he calls “embodiment relations” in which the tools are incorporated by the user and the world is experienced through the tool (think of the blind man’s stick). The second he calls a “hermeneutic relation.” Verbeek explains:

“In this relation, technologies provide access to reality not because they are ‘incorporated,’ but because they provide a representation of reality, which requires interpretation [….] Ihde shows that technologies, when mediating our sensory relationship with reality, transform what we perceive. According to Ihde, the transformation of perception always has the structure of amplification and reduction.”

Verbeek gives us the example of looking at a tree through an infrared camera: most of what we see when we look at a tree unaided is “reduced,” but the heat signature of the tree is “amplified” and the tree’s health may be better assessed. Ihde calls this capacity of a tool to transform our perception “technological intentionality.” In other words, the technology directs and guides our perception and our attention. It says to us, “Look at this here not that over there” or “Look at this thing in this way.” This function is not morally irrelevant, especially when you consider that this effect is not contained within the digital platform but spills out into our experience of the world.

Verbeek also believes that our reflection on the moral consequences of technology would do well to take virtue ethics seriously. With regards to the ethics of technology, we typically ask, “What should I or should I not do with this technology?” and thus focus our attention on our actions. In this, we follow the lead of the two dominant modern ethical traditions: the deontological tradition stemming from Immanuel Kant, on the one hand, and the consequentialist tradition, closely associated with Bentham and Mill, on the other. In the case of both traditions, a particular sort of moral subject or person is in view—an autonomous and rational individual who acts freely and in accord with the dictates of reason.

In the Kantian tradition, the individual, having decided upon the right course of action through the right use of their reason, is duty bound to act thusly, regardless of consequences. In the consequentialist tradition, the individual rationally calculates which action will yield the greatest degree of happiness, variously understood, and acts accordingly.

If technology comes into play in such reasoning by such a person, it is strictly as an instrument of the individual will. The question, again, is simply, “What should I do or not do with it?” We ascertain the answer by either determining the dictates of subjective reasoning or calculating the objective consequences of an action, the latter approach is perhaps more appealing for its resonance with the ethos of technique.

We might conclude, then, that the popular instrumentalist view of technology—a view which takes technology to be a mere a tool, a morally neutral instrument of a sovereign will—is the natural posture of the sort of individual or moral subject that modernity yields. It is unlikely to occur to such an individual that technology is not only a tool with which moral and immoral actions are preformed but also an instrument of moral formation, informing and shaping the moral subject.

It is not that the instrumentalist posture is of no value, of course. On the contrary, it raises important questions that ought to be considered and investigated. The problem is that this approach is incomplete and too easily co-opted by the very realities that it seeks to judge. It is, on its own, ultimately inadequate to the task because it takes as its starting point an inadequate and incomplete understanding of the human person.

There is, however, another older approach to ethics that may help us fill out the picture and take into account other important aspects of our relation to technology: the tradition of virtue ethics in both its classical and medieval manifestations.

Verbeek comments on some of the advantages of virtue ethics. To begin with, virtue ethics does not ask, “What am I to do?” Rather, it asks, in Verbeek’s formulation, “What is the good life?” We might also add a related question that virtue ethics raises: “What sort of person do I want to be?” This is a question that Verbeek also considers, taking his cues from the later work of Michel Foucault.

The question of the good life, Verbeek adds,

“does not depart from a separation of subject and object but from the interwoven character of both. A good life, after all, is shaped not only on the basis of human decisions but also on the basis of the world in which it plays itself out (de Vries 1999). The way we live is determined not only by moral decision making but also by manifold practices that connect us to the material world in which we live. This makes ethics not a matter of isolated subjects but, rather, of connections between humans and the world in which they live.”

Virtue ethics, with its concern for habits, practices, and communities of moral formation, illuminates the various ways technologies impinge upon our moral lives. For example, a technologically mediated action that, taken on its own and in isolation, may be judged morally right or indifferent may appear in a different light when considered as one instance of a habit-forming practice that shapes our disposition and character.

Moreover, virtue ethics, which predates the advent of modernity, does not necessarily assume the sovereign individual as its point of departure. For this reason, it is more amenable to the ethics of technological mediation elaborated by Verbeek. Verbeek argues for “the distributed character of moral agency,” distributed that is among subject and the various technological artifacts that mediate the subject’s perception of and action in the world.

At the very least, asking the sorts of questions raised within a virtue ethic framework fills out our picture of technology’s ethical consequences.

In Susanna Clarke’s delightful novel, Jonathan Strange & Mr. Norrell, a fantastical story cast in realist guise about two magicians recovering the lost tradition of English magic in the context of the Napoleonic Wars, one of the main characters, Strange, has the following exchange with the Duke of Wellington:

“Can a magician kill a man by magic?” Lord Wellington asked Strange. Strange frowned. He seemed to dislike the question. “I suppose a magician might,” he admitted, “but a gentleman never would.”

Strange’s response is instructive and the context of magic more apropos than might be apparent. Technology, like magic, empowers the will, and it raises the sort of question that Wellington asks: can such and such be done?

Not only does Strange’s response make the ethical dimension paramount, he approaches the ethical question as a virtue ethicist. He does not run consequentialist calculations nor does he query the deliberations of a supposedly universal reason. Rather, he frames the empowerment availed to him by magic with a consideration of the kind of person he aspires to be, and he subjects his will to this larger project of moral formation. In so doing, he gives us a good model for how we might think about the empowerments availed to us by technology.

As Verbeek, reflecting on the aptness of the word subject, puts it, “The moral subject is not an autonomous subject; rather, it is the outcome of active subjection.” It is, paradoxically, this kind of subjection that can ground the relative freedom with which we might relate to technology.

Most of this material originally appeared on the blog of the Center for the Study of Ethics and Technology. I repost it here in light of recent interest in the ethical consequences of technology. Verbeek’s work does not, it seems to me, get the attention it deserves.

Last year I wrote a few posts considering the motives that animate tech critics. I’ve slightly revised and collated three of those posts below.

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Some time ago, I confessed my deeply rooted Arcadian disposition. I added, “The Arcadian is the critic of technology, the one whose first instinct is to mourn what is lost rather than celebrate what is gained.” This phrase prompted a reader to suggest that the critic of technology is preferably neither an Arcadian nor a Utopian. This better sort of critic, he wrote, “doesn’t ‘mourn what is lost’ but rather seeks an understanding of how the present arrived from the past and what it means for the future.” The reader also referenced an essay by the philosopher of technology Don Ihde in which Ihde reflected on the role of the critic of technology by analogy to the literary critic or the art critic. The comment triggered a series of questions in my mind: What exactly makes for a good critic of technology? What stance, if any, is appropriate to the critic of technology toward technology? Can the good critic mourn?

Secondly, it is worth asking, what exactly does a critic of technology criticize? The objects of criticism are rather straightforward when we think of the food critic, the art critic, the music critic, the film critic, and so on. But what about the critic of technology? The trouble here, of course, stems from the challenge of defining technology. More often than not the word suggests the gadgets with which we surround ourselves. A little more reflection brings to mind a variety of different sorts of technologies: communication, military, transportation, energy, medical, agricultural, etc. The wheel, the factory, the power grid, the pen, the iPhone, the hammer, the space station, the water wheel, the plow, the sword, the ICBM, the film projector – it is a procrustean concept indeed that can accommodate all of this. What does it mean to be a critic of a field that includes such a diverse set of artifacts and systems?

I’m not entirely sure; let’s say, for present purposes, that critics of technology find their niche within certain subsets of the set that includes all of the above. The more interesting question, to me, is this: What does the critic love?*

If we think of all of the other sorts of critics, it seems reasonable to suppose that they are driven by a love for the objects and practices they criticize. The music critic loves music. The film critic loves film. The food critic loves food. (We might also grant that a certain variety of critic probably loves nothing so much as the sound of their own writing.) But does the technology critic love technology? Some of the best critics of technology have seemed to love technology not at all. What do we make of that?

What does the critic of technology love that is analogous to the love of the music critic for music, the food critic for food, etc.? Or does the critic of technology love anything at all in this way. Ihde seems not to think so when he writes that, unlike other sorts of critics, the critic of technology does not become so because they are “passionate” about the object of criticism.

Perhaps there is something about the instrumental character of technology that makes it difficult to complete the analogy. Music, art, literature, food, film – each of these requires technology of some sort. There are exceptions: dance and voice, for example. But for the most part, technology is involved in the creation of the works that are the objects of criticism. The pen, the flute, the camera – these tools are essential, but they are also subordinate to the finished works that they yield. The musician loves the instrument for the sake of the music that it allows them play. It would be odd indeed if a musician were to tell us that he loves his instrument, but is rather indifferent to the music itself. And this is our clue. The critic of technology is a critic of artifacts and systems that are always for the sake of something else. The critic of technology does not love technology because technology rarely exists for its own sake. Ihde is right in saying that the critic of technology is not, in fact, should not be passionate about the object of their criticism. But it doesn’t necessarily follow that no passion at all motivates their work.

So what does the critic of technology love? Perhaps it is the environment. Perhaps it is an ideal of community or friendship. Perhaps it is an ideal civil society. Perhaps it is health and vitality. Perhaps it is sound education. Perhaps liberty. Perhaps joy. Perhaps a particular vision of human flourishing. The critic of technology is animated by a love for something other than the technology itself. Returning to where we began, I would suggest that the critic may indeed mourn just as they may celebrate. They may do either to the degree that their critical work reveals technology’s complicity in either the destruction or promotion of that which they love.

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Criticism of technology, if it moves beyond something like mere description and analysis, implies making what amount to moral and ethical judgments. The critic of technology, if they reach conclusions about the consequences of technology for the lives of individual persons and the health of institutions and communities, will be doing work that rests on ethical principles and carries ethical implications.

In this they are not altogether unlike the music critic or the literary critic who is excepted to make judgments about the merits of a work art given the established standards of their field. These standards take shape within an institutionalized tradition of criticism. Likewise, the critic of technology — if they move beyond questions such as “Does this technology work?” or “How does this technology work?” to questions such as “What are the social consequences of this technology?” — is implicated in judgments of value and worth.

But according to what standards and from within which tradition? Not the standards of “technology,” if such could even be delineated, because these would merely consider efficiency and functionality (although even these are not exactly “value neutral”). It was, for example, a refusal to evaluate technology on its own terms that characterized the vigorous critical work of the late Jacques Ellul. As Ellul saw it, technology had achieved its nearly autonomous position in society because it was shielded from substantive criticism — criticism, that is, which refused to evaluate technology by its own standards. The critic of technology, then, proceeds with an evaluative framework that is independent of the logic of “technoscience,” as philosopher Don Ihde called it, and so they become an outsider to the field.

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“The contrast between art and literary criticism and what I shall call ‘technoscience criticism’ is marked. Few would call art or literary critics ‘anti-art’ or ‘anti-literature’ in the working out, however critically, of their products. And while it may indeed be true that given works of art or given texts are excoriated, demeaned, or severely dealt with, one does not usually think of the critic as generically ‘anti-art’ or ‘anti-literature.’ Rather, it is precisely because the critic is passionate about his or her subject matter that he or she becomes a ‘critic.’ That is simply not the case with science or technoscience criticism …. The critic—as I shall show below—is either regarded as an outsider, or if the criticism arises from the inside, is soon made to be a quasi-outsider.”

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The libertarian critic, the Marxist critic, the Roman Catholic critic, the posthumanist critic, and so on — each advances their criticism of technology informed by their ethical commitments. Their criticism of technology flows from their loves. Each criticizes technology according to the larger moral and ethical framework implied by the movements, philosophies, and institutions that have shaped their identity. And, of course, so it must be. We are limited beings whose knowledge is always situated within particular contexts. There is no avoiding this, and there is nothing particularly undesirable about this state of affairs. The best critics will be self-aware of their commitments and work hard to sympathetically entertain divergent perspectives. They will also work patiently and diligently to understand a given technology before reaching conclusions about its moral and ethical consequences. But I suspect this work of understanding, precisely because it can be demanding, is typically driven by some deeper commitment that lends urgency and passion to the critic’s work.

Such underlying commitments are often veiled within certain rhetorical contexts that demand as much, the academy for example. But debates about the merits of technology might be more fruitful if the participants acknowledged the tacit ethical frameworks that underlie the positions they stake out. This is because, in such cases, the technology in question is only a proxy for something else — the object of the critic’s love.

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*Ultimately, I mean love in the Augustinian sense: the deep commitments and desires which drive and motivate action.

What does the critic love? More specifically, what does the critic of technology love? This question presented itself to me while I was thinking about some comments left on a recent post. The comment questioned whether mourning or celebrating technology was proper to the role of the critic. Naturally, I wrote about it. It was, as is often the case, an exercise in clarifying my thoughts through writing.

I’ve thought some more about the work of technology criticism today, and again it was thanks to some online interactions. Let me put these before you and then offer a few more thoughts on the matter.

Evan Selinger tweeted the following:

And then:

Selinger, whose doctoral work was advised by Don Idhe, echoes Ihde who wrote:

“… I would say the science critic would have to be a well-informed, indeed much better than simply well-informed amateur, in its sense as a ‘lover’ of the subject matter, and yet not the total insider … Just as we are probably worst at our own self-criticism, that move just away from self-identity is needed to position the critical stance. Something broader, something more interdisciplinary, something more ‘distant’ is needed for criticism.”

Later on, Nathan Jurgenson made the following comment during an exchange about his recent essay:

“while it is technically true there has been a “loss” of sorts, i think it might be better to say at this juncture there has been a “change”; a change in how our reality has been augmented over time via various information technologies.”

I replied:

“Change” is certainly a more value-neutral way of putting it than “loss,” and depending on rhetorical context it certainly has its strengths. Sorting better and worse, of course, entails a normative framework of some sort, etc.

All of this began coalescing in my mind and what follows are some of the conclusions that emerged. Of course, I’m not claiming that these conclusions are necessarily entailed by the comments of others above. As the “Acknowledgements” in books always put it: I’m indebted to these, but any errors of fact or judgment are mine.

There is a reason why, as Selinger and Ihde put it, each in their own way, the critic must be something of an outsider. Criticism of technology, if it moves beyond something like mere description and analysis, implies making what amount to moral and ethical judgments. The critic of technology, if they reach conclusions about the consequences of technology for the lives of individual persons and the lives of institutions and communities, will be doing work that necessarily carries ethical implications.

In this they are not altogether unlike the music critic or the literary critic who is excepted to make judgments about the merits of a work art given the established standards of their field. These standards take shape within an established and institutionalized tradition of criticism. Likewise, the critic of technology — if they move beyond questions such as “Does this technology work?” or “How does this technology work?” to questions such as “What are the social consequences of this technology?” — is implicated in judgments of value and worth. Judgments, it might be argued, of greater consequence than those of the art or literary critic.

But according to what standards and from within which tradition? Not the standards of “technology,” if such could even be delineated, because these would merely be matters of efficiency and functionality (although even these are not exactly “value neutral”). It was, for example, a refusal to evaluate technology on its own terms that characterized the vigorous critical work of the late Jacques Ellul. As Ellul saw it, technology had achieved its nearly autonomous position in society because it was shielded from substantive criticism — criticism, that is, which refused to evaluate technology by its own standards. The critic of technology, then, proceeds with an evaluative framework that is independent of the logic of “technoscience,” as Ihde called it, and so they becomes an outsider to the field.

The libertarian critic, the Marxist critic, the Roman Catholic critic, the posthumanist critic, and so on — each advances their criticism of technology from the perspective of their ethical commitments. Their criticism of technology flows from their loves. Each criticizes technology according to the larger moral and ethical framework implied by the movements, philosophies, and institutions that have shaped their identity. And, of course, so it must be. There is no avoiding this, and there is nothing particularly undesirable about this state of affairs. It is true that prior to reaching conclusions about the moral and ethical consequences of technology, careful and patient work needs to be done to understand technology. But I suspect this work of understanding, particularly because it can be arduous, is typically driven by some deeper commitment that lends urgency and passion to the critic’s work.

Such commitments are often veiled for the sake of appearing appropriately objective and neutral within certain rhetorical contexts that demand as much, the academy for example. But I suspect that there are times when debates about the merits of technology would be advanced if the participants would acknowledge the tacit ethical frameworks that underlie the positions being staked out. And this is because, In such cases, the technology in question is only a proxy for something else — the object of the critic’s love.

“Why Not Science Critics?”, philosopher Don Ihde’s essay that was brought to my attention by a reader’s comment on a previous post, offers some interesting insights into the challenges faced by critics of what Ihde calls technoscience. Take a look at whole thing, but here are a few notable excerpts.

Ihde takes as his point of departure observations by Langdon Winner on the resistance of technology to criticism:

“Writers who venture beyond the most ordinary conceptions of tools and uses, writers who investigate ways in which technical forms are implicated in the basic patterns and problems of our culture are met with the charge that they are merely “antitechnology” [or “antiscience”] or “blaming [technoscience]”. All who have stepped forward as critics in this field–Lewis Mumford, Paul Goodman, Jacques Ellul, Ivan Illich, and others–have been tarred with the same brush, an expression of a desire to stop the dialogue rather than expand it. (Winner, Paths of Technopolis, p.3)”

Ihde adds the following on the knee-jerk charge of Luddism (remember the Borg Complex!):

“The contrast between art and literary criticism and what I shall call ‘technoscience criticism’ is marked. Few would call art or literary critics “anti-art” or “anti-literature” in the working out, however critically, of their products. And while it may indeed be true that given works of art or given texts are excoriated, demeaned, or severely dealt with, one does not usually think of the critic as generically “anti-art” or “anti-literature.” Rather, it is precisely because the critic is passionate about his or her subject matter that he or she becomes a ‘critic …. The critic–as I shall show below–is either regarded as an outsider, or if the criticism arises from the inside, is soon made to be a quasi-outsider.”

Among the reasons for this resistance to criticism, Ihde cites the historical emergence of technoscience as an alternative to religion, really as an alternative religion:

“The most obvious barrier to the formation of an institutionalized technoscience criticism lies in the role of late modern technoscience itself. Technoscience, as institution, began in early modernity by casting itself as the ‘other’ of religion. Its mythologies, drawn from Classical pre-Christian and often materialist (Democritean/Epicurean) sources; its anti-authoritarianism, including the Galilean claim to have exceeded the Scriptures and Church Father’s insights by replacing these with the new sighting possible through his telescope; and the much stronger later anti-religiousity of the Enlightenment which cast religion as ‘superstition’ and science as ‘rationality,’ all led to the Modernist substitution of what I am calling technoscience for religion. In the process, science–whether advertently or inadvertently–itself took on a quasi-theological characteristic. To be critical of the new ‘true faith’ was to be, in effect, ‘heretical’ now called ‘irrational.'”

Finally, I’ll throw in Ihde’s discussion of whistleblowers in the scientific community, which challenges the popular image of scientific objectivity:

“The second instance is one which begins with the critic as in insider, a “whistle blower” example: I suspect everyone here remembers the news coverage of the l99l “Gulf War.” It was a trial run on one of our “Star Wars” developments, the anti-missile missile, the “Patriot.” The newsbroadcasts showed over and over again the presumed ‘interceptions’ and claimed hits up to 95% effectiveness. If, then, you followed the more critical analyses to follow, you will probably recall that there was an admission that effectiveness or ‘hits’ declined to about 24%. Part of this admission was due to the early-on analysis performed by Theodore Postal, a ballistics expert and MIT scientist who took news videotapes used to make the hit claims and subjected them to magnified, enhanced, and computer image techniques which on closer inspection showed that claimed hits were not hits at all. Eventually, he concluded that there may not have been a single, verifiable hit which had been made by a Patriot! Needless to say, this claim was not appreciated by Raytheon, the manufacturer of the missile, nor by his colleague, Shaoul Ezekiel, who had advised Raython, and eventually not even by MIT itself which got caught in the cross-fire of claims and anti-claims. The battle turned nasty: Raytheon implied that Postal had actually doctored the tapes, but later reduced this to the claim, suggested by Ezekiel, that the grain structure and imaging of video tapes was simply too gross to draw the conclusions drawn. The battle continues to this day, particularly between Postol and Exekiel concerning ethical conduct, with MIT trying to shy away due to the large amounts it gets annual from Raytheon. (see Science, 23 February l996, pp. l050-l052). Nor is this some isolated instance. In a study of the “costs of whistle blowing’ Science (5 January l996, p. 35) reports that more than two thirds of whistle blowers (within science as an institution) experience negative effects ranging from ‘ostracism’ through ‘pressure to drop allegations,’ to the actual non-renewals or losses of jobs. The long drawn out ‘David Baltimore’ case is another of these scenarios, in which the whistle blower–not the offender who faked the notebooks–was fired. The insider critic is isolated and, if possible, often separated and thus made into an outsider or ‘other.’ While the above scenario would not be much different for business corporations, neither would we be surprised about this ostracization from the corporate sector within business, but for the popular image of science as being more like a Church in the claims about critical concern for truth, this may come as a surprise, although not for those of us close enough to realize that science-as-institution is today much more like the corporate world than it is a church!”